Being gay and raised Christian sucks.

[toedipper]

I spent ten long years in the closet because I was afraid of my father - a fundamentalist christian, and because the self hate I was taught by the
christian church. I hear ya.

 

[jdoe4822]

There's a psalm that says, "Be silent and know that I am God". Guys, God has always been there, but you do not allow for silence of the heart in order to hear Him. Stop doing all the talking, and shouting and be silent. I know what I am talking about- been there and done that.

I don't know if I believe God exists or not (hope he doesn't cause I'm screwed if he does). I certainly can't tell you that you haven't experienced him. Back when I did for sure believe in him, it was that empty silence that followed my prayers calling for help from him (when I was hospitalized more than any other time) that helped drive me away fromt the faith.

 

[Kulindahr]

^^ and ^

I just remembered a cartoon I saw in a church magazine once. This angel reporter was interviewing God for the Heavenly News, and asked, "So, Lord, with all the prayers in the world, is there one answer you give more than any other?"
"Oh, yes", says God. "It's, 'You have got to be kidding!'"

 

[luminum]

Maybe you were asking for something that wasn't conducive to your salvation, or you are making your Will more important than Gods Will. God answers all prayers, and sometimes we find those answers in unexpected places, or the answers to our prayers are right before our eyes, but we are too blinded by things that keep us from God, ie, blocks our path to him, and being Gay isn't one of them.

And what if he wasn't asking for things that weren't conducive to his salvation? I'm curious...

Similarly, if no one mortal can fathom God's plan, in what way would any individual know when they are "making their will more important than God's will?" And likewise, what if someone wasn't doing that either?

Questions, questions...

 

[jaybuoy]

Christianity is bull shit, I hate the fact I am a christian its why I am so afraid of being gay, I use to always be in denial about it and in the past month I have started coming to terms with it. Christianity has knocked my confidence, and I feel as if I am going through a stage in my life where I feel like whats the point in life. I try hold my head up high, posting on this forum I find hard, I have seen plenty of guys on here that are fucking georgous but I feel like a bad person thinking that. And in a way I sort of hate myself, but then I look at this way.

God has made me in his image, obviously he has wanted me to be gay!

 

[Matterhorny13]

I know it! I'm Catholic and still in the closet, and everytime my dad makes a slam against gay guys, I go even deeper into the closet.

 

[luminum]

Hopefully you'll reach that point where you refuse to let your father control your life with his prejudices. It isn't easy, but every person has their limit. Let's hope you find yours sooner than later. We wouldn't want to wake up a 50 year old man and find that we lived our youth afraid to love and laugh and feel free and happy, now would we?

Good luck.

 

[jaybuoy]

I know it! I'm Catholic and still in the closet, and everytime my dad makes a slam against gay guys, I go even deeper into the closet.

I know how you feel, my dads and his girlfreind are always making snide remarks, and taking the piss. My mom does it less however, I dont think she is going to be to pleased when she finds out. You probaly wont tell your parents for years like me, but do what I did yesterday and tell a close freind.She really did not care, and even admitted to me she was bi, was a very overwhelming moment. But take the advice off some of the people on here, they have said it to me if I dont admit it I will never be happy, and I dont like that thought of being alone forever. I will tell my parents or at least my mom when I move out!

 

[Kulindahr]

I know it! I'm Catholic and still in the closet, and everytime my dad makes a slam against gay guys, I go even deeper into the closet.

If anything he says exceeds the Catechism, call him on it.

Hopefully you'll reach that point where you refuse to let your father control your life with his prejudices. It isn't easy, but every person has their limit. Let's hope you find yours sooner than later. We wouldn't want to wake up a 50 year old man and find that we lived our youth afraid to love and laugh and feel free and happy, now would we?

Too late for me -- don't you follow that path.

 

[JustMe891]

So have I.

I finally realized that God made me gay; it wasn't my personal choice. I really hated myself for a long time because I was different, but convinced myself that it was a challenge that I had to rise to accept. I now take church not at face value, but for positive guidance in my life. I accept others and realize that we are all people that need help and support from one another. Never judge - it's not our job. Never look on a person's sins, but instead on their character.

I was raised Catholic and love the history and traditions of my church. Although I am an 'abomination' by the preachings of my spiritual leaders, I have to remind myself that it's humans that decide so much in my theology and not God Himself.

I know we all take different viewpoints on religious matters, but this is the best that I can offer and hope that you do well in your struggles with this aspect of your life.

Utter, utter bollocks my friend, would you belive in this 'god thing' if you only heard about it yesterday? by the way ask any god-botherer you know if they aprove of your gay life-style, ask your employer, ask your extended family etc, etc, lets face it they all hate you (and me) and would like us to burn in their vision of hell, have a nice day as they say in the good-old USA.

 

[Kulindahr]

Utter, utter bollocks my friend, would you belive in this 'god thing' if you only heard about it yesterday? by the way ask any god-botherer you know if they aprove of your gay life-style, ask your employer, ask your extended family etc, etc, lets face it they all hate you (and me) and would like us to burn in their vision of hell, have a nice day as they say in the good-old USA.

Damn -- a gay 'redneck'.

Yep, you're as ignorant and prejudiced as the worst rednecks around here, just from the other side!

For starters, there's a fair number of "god-botherer" on JUB. There are also numerous floats from churches, temples, synagogues, etc. in Gay Pride parades. PFLAG, in many places, meets in churches.

Them is the facts -- which establish your ignorance.

The use of "god-botherer" establishes your prejudice, as does your phrase "they all hate you"; even among those who believe homosexuality sends people to hell, a large number don't hate gays at all.

 

[hotatlboi]

would you belive in this 'god thing' if you only heard about it yesterday?

Seriously, no more than you would believe in humpty dumpty.

Corollary: If you had been told as a small child that humpty dumpty was real and you grew up in a social environment that continually reinforced that belief, would you reject it now?

 

[hotatlboi]

There's no need to reject the church or Christianity because of the attitudes of the ignorant.

On the contrary, that's a spectacularly visceral reason to reject it. It's a demonstration of how religions almost always breed ignorance (and even extol it in some cases) on so many things. It compels people to set aside their logical mind in exchange for an arbitrary set of beliefs with no basis whatsoever. This extends to politics, science, and even all perception of the world. It becomes a filter through which people will not accept anything (no matter how well founded upon fact or modern ideas it is) unless it jives with what some bronze age tribesmen scribbled down on some papyrus long ago.

 

[Kulindahr]

On the contrary, that's a spectacularly visceral reason to reject it. It's a demonstration of how religions almost always breed ignorance (and even extol it in some cases) on so many things. It compels people to set aside their logical mind in exchange for an arbitrary set of beliefs with no basis whatsoever. This extends to politics, science, and even all perception of the world. It becomes a filter through which people will not accept anything (no matter how well founded upon fact or modern ideas it is) unless it jives with what some bronze age tribesmen scribbled down on some papyrus long ago.

Invalid cause-effect analysis.

Given that religion has yielded great art, music, architecture, public order, help for the poor, etc. etc., breeding prosperity, advancement, and genius, there's a problem here: you're looking at one end product and concluding that it's the only product.

Religion produces all sorts of different things -- power structures are what breed ignorance; it's the easiest way to keep followers. It doesn't matter if it's a religion, a political party, or what.

 

[TX-Beau]

Given that religion has yielded great art, music, architecture, public order, help for the poor, etc. etc., breeding prosperity, advancement, and genius, there's a problem here: you're looking at one end product and concluding that it's the only product.

I don't think you can claim that the reason these people were geniuses was because of religion.

Religions have also generated genocide, oppression, willful ignorance, small mindedness, greed and self-righteousness.

And which religion had bred prosperity? For whom? Where?

I don't think that religion breeds ignorance but really Kuli, come on.

 

[luminum]

I don't think you can claim that the reason these people were geniuses was because of religion.

Religions have also generated genocide, oppression, willful ignorance, small mindedness, greed and self-righteousness.

And which religion had bred prosperity? For whom? Where?

I don't think that religion breeds ignorance but really Kuli, come on.

Buddhism. Unitarian Universalism. Wicca. Just naming a few. Don't you find it just as sad to be dancing so far on one extreme as it is to dance on the other?

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't think you can claim that the reason these people were geniuses was because of religion.

Religions have also generated genocide, oppression, willful ignorance, small mindedness, greed and self-righteousness.

And which religion had bred prosperity? For whom? Where?

I don't think that religion breeds ignorance but really Kuli, come on.

LOL

I knew someone would pounce on the genius reference.

No, genius has to be inherent, but to be expressed it also has to be inspired.

As for prosperity: it was the Church which held things together after Rome fell, to maintain order and keep what prosperity there was -- that was a losing battle, given the time and place, but it was at least attempted. It was also the church which fostered agricultural sciences, including elevating viniculture and wine-making to a high art, developed and improved water and wind power for industry, drove advances in time-keeping, and more (especially the Cistercians, but others as well).

I wish I could remember the history work I got it from; even so, I'll use the phrase, that Christianity lifted man's eyes from the dirt under his feet to things higher than himself. The power structure of the Church often went against that, but in spite of them the phenomenon sprouted all over and grew.

These days a common reactionary ideology has replaced the power structure as the lover of ignorance in the church-in-general. In many ways, that's worse, because there's no head to lop off to obtain a swift change in direction. Those who love the simplicity of ignorance have found that there is power in pooling their preference for poverty of mind; it's a grass-roots love of ignorance this time around -- a very democratic sort of power-structure.

 

[hotatlboi]

Invalid cause-effect analysis.

Given that religion has yielded great art, music, architecture, public order, help for the poor, etc. etc., breeding prosperity, advancement, and genius, there's a problem here:

Whatever positive effects religion has brought us absolutely pales in comparison to what modern society would NOT be if man had never learned to seek knowledge apart from religion during the enlightenment. I don't think you can overstate the difference we would see.

Religion produces all sorts of different things -- power structures are what breed ignorance; it's the easiest way to keep followers. It doesn't matter if it's a religion, a political party, or what.

The power structure is part of it, and it acts at different levels. At the very start is the parent/child power structure. The parent introduces their religious belief to their child's mind which is not capable of rational thought in their early years. This is where the vast majority of religious people get their beliefs. Did people in the Asia/Africa all make a rational choice that Islam was the correct religion? Did people in America make the same choice for Christianity? Of course not. The geographical groupings of religion make it apparent that it's a societal belief which is passed on by members of different regions to their children.

At the next level you have the power structure of the church or modern organized religion. And there its more of a belief reinforcement through group acceptance. Someone attends church, hears what the minister teaches, sees everyone around him believing it, sees other people say it affected their lives, etc. so in his mind that lends credibility to it.

So I think you are partially correct in that the power structures are how many people arrive at a religious belief, but I maintain that if they are willing to accept many of the religious beliefs which are advocated based on absolutely nothing, they have jettisoned their logical mind to such an extent that they would be willing to accept other nonsensical things as well.

 

[Kulindahr]

Whatever positive effects religion has brought us absolutely pales in comparison to what modern society would NOT be if man had never learned to seek knowledge apart from religion during the enlightenment. I don't think you can overstate the difference we would see.

They can't be separated so easily.

Without the Christian church, there never would have been an enlightenment; it was the church (Benedictines, foremost) which kept literacy alive and preserved books, and made possible the trading of manuscripts when the Byzantine penchant for scholarship infected the Islamic world, where it flowered incredibly. That flowering -- due to religion -- spilled back over into a Europe able to receive it thanks to scholars of the church which had kept learning alive.

Even during the Enlightenment, artists, scholars, and others were sponsored by churchmen. The two are quite entangled, to the point that it can be argued that the concept of seeking knowledge "apart from God", that is, other than in the scriptures, actually came from the church -- and has been so argued by serious scholars, who point out that the foundation of the sciences as we know them was the concept of the faithfulness and constancy of God: all other ancient religions had no such concept; the gods were whimsical, moody, undependable even when bribed, but the God of the Bible was one who could be counted on to stick to His guns and keep Creation orderly; thus the way Nature worked could be investigated "on its own", without reference to divine revelation at all, because the Creator/Sustainer could be counted on to have organization which could be discovered. With gods inclined toward magic, who could be petitioned to do practically anything at all if you knew the right formula or had the right bribe, could never have lended such confidence that Creation could be understood; all was in flux, all subject to whimsy, with no center that would hold.

The power structure is part of it, and it acts at different levels. At the very start is the parent/child power structure. The parent introduces their religious belief to their child's mind which is not capable of rational thought in their early years. This is where the vast majority of religious people get their beliefs. Did people in the Asia/Africa all make a rational choice that Islam was the correct religion? Did people in America make the same choice for Christianity? Of course not. The geographical groupings of religion make it apparent that it's a societal belief which is passed on by members of different regions to their children.

At the next level you have the power structure of the church or modern organized religion. And there its more of a belief reinforcement through group acceptance. Someone attends church, hears what the minister teaches, sees everyone around him believing it, sees other people say it affected their lives, etc. so in his mind that lends credibility to it.

So I think you are partially correct in that the power structures are how many people arrive at a religious belief, but I maintain that if they are willing to accept many of the religious beliefs which are advocated based on absolutely nothing, they have jettisoned their logical mind to such an extent that they would be willing to accept other nonsensical things as well.

The power structures are the culprits, and it doesn't take religion's involvement at all. Politics is a common area of ideological indoctrination, as are nationalism and racism, totally apart from religion (though when more than one of these is mixed, things get geometrically worse -- e.g. the fascists, or more close to home, the ReligioPublicans).

Major lurches in history take place when large numbers of people do in fact make choices of ideology; such choices increased Christianity from a tiny group in a tiny province to a force potent enough that an emperor adopted it, increased socialism from a theoretical exercise to a system believed in by enough people in the United States that the two major parties nearly tripped over each other adopting chunks of its program into their platforms. Then there's a sort of collapse into inertia, where kids grow up with their parents' ideologies, whether religious, political, or whatever.

The American Revolution is considered by some to have been such an eruption of a new idea that was accepted by many, but while that holds some truth, it was very much a conservative revolution, driven by the desire of people to hold on to what had been theirs. That desire stirred many people who'd taken their liberties for granted to taken them seriously enough to put their lives on the line for them. IMO, what America needs right now is a movement that will turn people to choosing those same values, not by lip service, but in reality, because only such a revolution has the potential to deliver us from the reactionaries of the religious right.

Such a revolution may be happening, but if so it isn't deep enough: it's possible to be considered a patriotic American without actually believing that "all men are created equal"... or we wouldn't be having fights over the status of gays before the law. When Christians wake up to the reality that, if they take the Bible seriously, those words were part of God's plan for this country -- along with those in the First Amendment about religion -- such a revolution would occur rapidly. Unfortunately, most Christians these days seem to be content to play the part of the Pharisees in the New Testament: proud in their own righteousness, confident of the rightness of their cause, certain that it's God's will for them to coerce everyone else to follow their lead.

 

[luminum]

Including the fact that for many, the first step toward enlightenment through literacy began through their exposure to religious scripture. "Religion" and unformalized mystic traditions were for centuries (and even now) the fundamental humanistic building blocks for thought and story, communication and connection.

And even perceiving this (ridiculous) notion that religion is evil, remember that without an "other" there can be no "self." Without limits, there is no sense of identity. You "are" and you "are not." You "believe" and you "do not believe."

Would you know who you are and are not without extremist Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Nazism, Taoism or any other school of thought, good or bad to agree and disagree with? Definition requires contrast. But I digress, that's a more abstract point.

While we all may have encountered individuals who were "ruined" by their religious upbringing, there are just as many who are, if nothing else, kept alive and with hope through their religions. A friend of mine converted from Catholicism to non-denominational Christianity and it was the sole thing that kept her motivated as she struggled to teach inner city children whom the world had given up on. A couple I know and their entire congregation rejected the Catholic arch diocese statement that queer members of the church not be allowed to engage in marriage ceremonies because they knew that the true essence of their faith was to be loving and inclusive, including to their queer members (many of which were pall bearers in the church). Another friend's branch of Hinduism endowed her with the ease of mind and lightness of heart to always be thankful for what she has and to never fear an obstacle in her path.

All things in mankind, all happenstance, is duplicitous. Science has brought us enlightenment and a better quality of life, but it also brought ethical dilemmas we would have never had to consider, like the Tuskeegee Experiments, the crucial advancements to medical and aeronautical science through Nazi experimentation on concentration camp victims, or biological/chemical warfare.

Before we condemn an abstract concept for its damages, we should consider its contributions and think about the same harms and benefits of those abstract human concepts we accept so readily as "good" things. Let's never throw the baby out with the bathwater.